Saturday Session March 6th 1pm - 4pm

The next Saturday Technology Training Session on Saturday March 6^th will feature a panel discussion on the topic of employment for people with disabilities and mentoring relationships within the Adaptive Technology Community.   Gail Snider from Columbia Lighthouse will talk about job preparedness in the first hour and Tony Paschal from ICON Services in Alexandria will again be participating along with a panel of people who are employed and are using Adaptive Technologies at an expert level as part of their job in the second hour.  The session will be held in the Adaptive Services Division, room 215 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial library from 1 to 4pm. From 3pm to 4pm refreshments will be served and informal networking is encouraged.

Topics of discussion with include:

• Setting up mentoring relationships
• Resume Writing
• KSAs
• Schedule A letters
• Dressing for success
• Interview skills

All of the Saturday Sessions in March and April will be on the topic of employment including March 6^th and 20^th and April 3^rd and 17^th.  All sessions will be from 1pm to 4pm and will have the goal of assisting library customers in their job search.  

We would like to develop a curriculum for job preparedness at the library so that volunteers can train Adaptive Technology users on a regular basis.

We would also like to encourage mentoring relationships within the community, so that AT users who are employed and can share their strategies for success can be paired with AT users who are at more of a beginning level and are searching for employment.

We also encourage anyone who has skills with resume writing and and job search to volunteer to work one on one with our customers in the division who are looking for work.  Many of our customer only need a small amount of magnification on the computer screen and mentors do not have to know how to use ATs at an expert level.  Our only requirement for volunteering to be a mentor is that you have experience with job search and resume building.

The Adaptive Services Division is now open on Monday and Tuesday nights until 9:00pm, which is a great time for people who work during the day, to volunteer to sit down with customers who need job search skills for a 2 hour session training session.

I hope you can make it!

The AccessibilityDC Meetup will be moved from the third to the fourth Tuesday night of the month 6 to 9pm, just for this month, because of the South by SouthWest Conference.   So instead of March 16^th the meeting will be on March 23^rd.  The topic will be PDF Accessibility.  Moe info on this soon!

Patrick